Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for dynamically providing access to files of presently unmapped remote computers.
Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Computers today are often organized in data communications networks, local and wide area, are connected to the Internet, and are otherwise connected through a data communications network to many other computers. File access within most user level applications, however, is limited to the files stored in a computer's local file systems. A user may open and save files within the local file system. Presently a user is able to access files stored on a remote computer through a user level application only if that remote computer is mapped to the local computer. In such a case, the remote computer appears to the user as if it were a local drive. There is at present no way to dynamically access files of a remote computer that is presently not mapped to a local computer.